Antibiotics

Researchers who examined feather remnants of slaughtered chickens have found that antibiotics banned by federal regulators may still be used in poultry production. The researchers from  the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University looked for drug and other residue in the feather meal. The findings included amounts of fluoroquinolones, a spectrum of antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, including infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic classes.

Researchers who examined feather remnants of slaughtered chickens have found that antibiotics banned by federal regulators may still be used in poultry production. The researchers from  the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University looked for drug and other residue in the feather meal. The findings included amounts of fluoroquinolones, a spectrum of antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, including infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic classes.

Researchers report that they have found evidence of banned antibiotics in poultry byproducts, suggesting that growers are evading a 2005 prohibition on their use in treating chickens and turkeys. Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and at Arizona State University detected fluoroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in people, as well as otherover-the-counter drugs and residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.  The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry production in 2005 amid concern about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  But in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology , the two schools' researchers report they found the banned drugs in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal collected from six states and China.

Researchers report that they have found evidence of banned antibiotics in poultry byproducts, suggesting that growers are evading a 2005 prohibition on their use in treating chickens and turkeys. Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and at Arizona State University detected fluoroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in people, as well as otherover-the-counter drugs and residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.  The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry production in 2005 amid concern about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  But in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology , the two schools' researchers report they found the banned drugs in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal collected from six states and China.

WASHINGTON - In the typical chicken house on the Eastern Shore, tens of thousands of cramped and clucking fowl munch on antibiotics that should be used to cure human illness, not prod chickens to fatten faster. Until recently, there was a storehouse of antibiotics that could handily fight even the nastiest of infectious diseases. But the overuse of these miracle drugs - in hospitals, consumer products, veterinary clinics, cattle feedlots and hog and chicken factories - is resulting in the spread of super bugs doctors may be unable to cure.

The Food and Drug Administration says it will test raw milk weekly around the nation to determine if it contains certain antibiotics.The agency said yesterday 250 locations across the country will be chosen for testing, and raw milk samples will be collected each week from five of these sites, selected randomly.The samples will be tested for the presence of eight sulfa drugs and three tetracycline drugs. The FDA said that when residues are found, the states will be told and the agency will help track down the source.

I have been married over a year and use the pill as my form of birth control. When I need an antibiotic, I've been warned that such medicine can counteract the birth control pill. As a science major, I'm not satisfied just knowing that something "is"; I like to know "why." Can you explain exactly how oral contraceptives and antibiotics interact? And is it true that my husband and I should use backup contraception for a month after I stop the antibiotic, just to be sure?This interaction is both complicated and controversial.

Q: My daughter has had three episodes of bronchitis this year which didn't seem to respond to antibiotics. She usually starts with a cold and then it settles into her chest with a cough and chest tightness. Why don't antibiotics help her? Could she be immune to them?A: We suspect your daughter is probably quite all right although we don't have all the information necessary to reassure you completely. As a first step, let us try to define precisely the word bronchitis, which means different things to different people.

Antibiotic treatment of peptic ulcers -- performed now on only about 2 percent of patients in the United States -- could dramatically decrease the incidence of the ailment, sparing Americans a lot of stomach pain and saving billions of dollars now spent on surgery and drug therapy.However, widespread use of antibiotics for this problem could also lead to development of drug resistance in the bacteria, Heliobacter pylori, thought to cause peptic ulcers, as well as other intestinal bacteria, and should be carefully considered.

Q: A distant relative's child just had something called "epiglottitis." My mother said the doctor had to put a hole in his neck. Is this a strange new disease? I'm worried my son might get it.A: Epiglottitis is not new, but fortunately it is relatively rare. The epiglottis is a thin flap of tissue beyond the back of the tongue that flops down to cover the opening into the trachea (the major airway that acts like a valve to guide food and drink into the stomach and to keep it out of the lungs.

You're in an emergency room. You're worried. OK, maybe that's an understatement. Maybe you're terrified. This may not be the setting in which you always make your best decisions. But you won't get to take back any of the decisions you make in an ER, so you have to make the best decision you can the first time. Assuming that you don't have an immediately apparent catastrophic illness, here are four questions you can ask your doctor that may save you time and money - and perhaps even spare you or your child one of the complications that are sometimes associated with medical care.

Former Gov. William Donald Schaefer remained hospitalized Saturday with "a little bit" of pneumonia but is responding to antibiotics, his friend and former aide Lainy LeBow-Sachs said. The 89-year-old Schaefer had some trouble breathing about 9 p.m. Thursday and was taken from the Charlestown retirement community in Catonsville to St. Agnes Hospital, LeBow-Sachs said. Describing the health of the former governor, comptroller and Baltimore mayor, LeBow-Sachs said it's "on and off. " "He's certainly not the governor you know.

It's getting to be the time of year when everyone seems to have a runny nose. Sometimes it's a cold or allergies. And sometimes it's sinusitis, or inflamed linings in the sinus cavities. The cavities become blocked and infected. Dr. Alan Oshinsky, an otolaryngologist at Mercy Medical Center, says it's not always easy to self-diagnose sinusitis, but there are treatments that can help. Question: What is sinusitis, and who is likely to develop it? Answer: Sinusitis means inflammation and infection in the paranasal sinuses.

Consumers who thought they were buying antibiotic-free chicken could receive $5 million in cash and coupons under a proposed settlement to a lawsuit contending that the nation's largest poultry producer falsely promoted its birds as being raised without drugs. The deal to end a class action lawsuit against Tyson Foods will get its first public hearing Friday, when a federal judge in Baltimore is scheduled to review it for fairness. If approved, thousands of U.S. consumers could receive refunds of up to $50 per household.

Myra Roseman, a retired bacteriologist and research associate with the department of epidemiology at what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, died Nov. 21 from complications of dementia at the North Oaks retirement community. She was 88. Myra Goldenberg, the daughter of an engineer and homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. After graduating from Western High School in 1937, she was 19 when she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and bacteriology from Goucher College.

Diverticulitis occurs when small, bulging pockets - or diverticula - occur within the colon and become infected. In most cases a slight or micro-perforation occurs. The majority of the time, the healthy body confines the infection to a very small space, and with time and a course of antibiotics, the infection will resolve itself. Dr. John L. Newman, a gastroenterologist with Anne Arundel Gastroenterology Associates, writes about diverticulitis. Diverticulosis, the presence of the pocket without infection, is very common as we grow older.

Faced with mounting evidence that the routine use of antibiotics in livestock may diminish the drugs' power to cure infections in people, the Food and Drug Administration has begun a major revision of its guidelines for approving new antibiotics for animals and for monitoring the effects of old ones.The goal of the revision is to minimize the emergence of bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics. Such resistance makes them difficult or impossible to kill.Drug-resistant infections, some fatal, have been increasing in people in the United States, and many scientists attribute the problem to the misuse of antibiotics in people and animals.

Q: For many years my doctor gave me antibiotics whenever I went to him with a cold. He has now retired and I am going to a new doctor who refuses to prescribe antibiotics for my colds. I like this doctor and do not want to change again, but what can I do to convince him to give me antibioticswhen they are needed for a cold?A: Instead of telling you how to convince your doctor to give you antibiotics for a cold, let me try and convince you that he is doing the right thing. In the first place, antibiotics are of no use in the treatment of colds or any other illness caused by a virus.